Ancient Tasmanian Devil Cousin Was Flesh-Eating Terror

Photo: A newly described ancient marsupial is a distant relative of modern-day Tasmanian devils. Credit: Thinkstock A new species of extinct flesh-eating marsupial that terrorized Australia's forests some five million years ago has been identified from a recently discovered fossil site, scientists said Tuesday.

The animal, weighing 20 to 25 kilograms (44 to 55 pounds) and named Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum, is a distant and bigger cousin of Australia's largest living flesh-eating marsupial -- the Tasmanian Devil.

An illustration shows the size comparison of Australian marsupials including new extinct species of carnivorous marsupial, Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum, from New Riversleigh fossil site in Queensland. Credit: KAREN BLACK/UNSW

It is the first creature to be formally identified from a range of strange new animals whose remains have been found at a fossil site in remote northwestern Queensland.

"W. tomnpatrichorum had very powerful teeth capable of killing and slicing up the largest animals of its day," said University of New South Wales professor Mike Archer, the lead author of a study into the find published in the Memoirs of Museum Victoria.

"New Riversleigh is producing the remains of a bevy of strange new small to medium-sized creatures, with Whollydooleya tomnpatrichorum, the first one to be described," said Archer.

"These new discoveries are starting to fill in a large hole in our understanding about how Australia's land animals transformed from being small denizens of its ancient wet forests to huge survivors on the second most arid continent on Earth."

Team member Suzanne Hand said medium- to large-sized Australian Late Miocene creatures have previously been known from fossil deposits in the Northern Territory.

"But those deposits give almost no information about the small to medium-sized mammals that existed at the same time, which generally provide more clues about the nature of prehistoric environments and climates," Hand said.